That wasn't the point of the paper. You interpret it as flamebait because you believe that it presents an argument against AGW. It does no such thing, but you have revealed your own bias.
There are two articles linked in TFS. I think you have misinterpreted GP as referring to the first linked article (the Nature: Climate Change research letter) when it was actually referring to the second linked article (the Register piece subtitled "IPCC has got it all wrong, say boffins".)
It should have been obvious that GP was referring to the Register piece for two main reasons: 1. It referred to "the article" conveniently ignoring recent anthropogenic warming, which the Nature: Climate Change research letter mentions, for context, in its second sentence, but the Register piece doesn't mention at all. 2. As you yourself mention, it interprets "the article" as presenting an argument against AGW, which the Register piece does, but the Nature: Climate Change research letter does not.
That's the second sentence of the summary. How can it not be about AGW when it talks about this having an effect opposite of "net anthropogenic forcing since 1750"? Did you even read the paper?
Did you? That reference -- which is provided to give context to the overall significance of measurements of orbital forcing (e.g., why is it that anyone should care about what this paper is about) -- is the only reference to AGW in the paper.
Its not at all about AGW one way or the other (except in that its about methodology in climate science which might eventually have some impact on studies that actually do directly relate to AGW.)
... like most corporate fines, the number seems absurdly low.
Its actually not a fine, its a settlement without admission of wrongdoing. An actual fine would require the FTC to prove that Google had done something for which it could be fined, which would have involved more public expense at greater risk. (If they had a really strong case, they would have held out for at least a settlement with an admission of wrongdoing, since when finalized such a settlement would have greater value in future proceedings.)
The only people who could "curbstomp" Prop 8 were the voters or the courts.
Google has directed resources at getting each of those decision makers to do so (and not just against Prop 8, but also the federal DOMA.)
They could've outspent the Mormons,
So you are quibbling now that they shouldn't launch a global effort for equal rights now because during an election campaign where an equal rights issue was on the ballot in California, they didn't spend as much money as you would have preferred on that effort? How does that argument even begin to make sense?
I heard nothing of it and I live in California - that tells you how shittily they actually opposed it.
I heard lots about it and I live in California. That you didn't may tell me more about you than it does about Google's opposition to Prop 8.
Historically, that's not really true. Marriage historically has been about property rights, first and foremost, which are clearly within what is understood in the modern world as being part of the function of civil government. Its usually had both what, from a modern perspective, are "civil" and "religious" trappings, because the whole idea of a crisp boundary between religious institutions and civil government is extraordinarily modern.
That's the point. He was joining an independent clause to a dependent clause with a comma which is a grammar fail.
Its a grammar fail, but not -- as suggested upthread -- a comma splice. A comma splice is a run-on formed by connecting an independent clause to another independent clause with a bare comma, rather than either a semi-colon or a comma plus a conjunction.
You may be one of the rare few that can truly tax Word's grammar checker but the overwhelming majority of people who believe that it's useless are flat wrong.
If your grammar is bad enough that what it catches isn't mostly flat-out wrong, then its unlikely that it is going to consistently lead you to something that is both correct and has the intended semantics.
I see this at work basically every day. I work with people who have degrees and should be able to write fairly well (at least well enough to not lose a grade on grammar) but neither properly capitalize nor know the common homonyms.
Not knowing common homonyms isn't usually a source of errors (of grammar, spelling, or usage), though not knowing common homophones can be a source of spelling errors that aren't caught by spelling checkers (or a cause of choosing the wrong correction for a spelling error that is caught by a spelling checker) -- and which look like usage errors. But these types of errors can be impossible for a grammar checker to catch, as well, since often a set of homophones are all the same part of speech, even though they have different semantics.
I'm fine with Google being free to promote homosexuality as long as I am free to disagree with them and promote heterosexuality.
Google isn't promoting homosexuality, they are promoting equal rights for homosexuals. They aren't the same thing, any more than promoting equal rights for racial minorities is the same thing is promoting people deciding to be racial minorities.
You are, of course, free both to promote heterosexuality and to do what is actually parallel to what Google is doing, which would be promoting equal rights for heterosexuals.
Of course, the thing with equality is that promoting equal rights for group X is exactly the same thing as promoting equal rights from group defined as not-X.
The concept of divorce needs to be amended (who leaves whom? is the whole marriage severed when one of the spouses leaves? if not, who gets what?).
Interestingly, most of the obvious issues with divorce have been rather thoroughly addressed in business law relating to the separation of partnerships, and the issues are pretty much exactly parallel. That's not to say that there aren't issues to be addressed, but its not like there isn't a pretty good roadmap already laid out for how to address most of them.
What I'd really like to hear is for a gay marriage advocate to explain to me why polygamy should be illegal
Why should someone who is advocating for the position "marriage between two people of the same gender should be legal" be compelled to first defend the position "marriage between more than two people should be illegal"?
Because existing laws are written with the word "marriage". It's much easier to legalize marriage than do a find/replace on the entire of the law.
Plus, it makes it much easier to maintain the legal code if you reuse the existing code for marriage rather than copy-and-paste it with a different name.
There is *no* reason that "marriage" needs to be defined in law at all. Just let people love and live however they see fit.
Marriage historically is primarily about the ownership and inheritance of property and custody of and responsibility for children. These are things which are clearly important concerns of civil law, and remain the primary focus of the civil institution of marriage. How people love is (in the grand sweep of history) only tangentially related to marriage.
note I don't include child support in this list--a separate matter entirely
Its actually not at all a separate matter, since the legal presumption of paternity that is associated with marriage is actually quite important in child support.
Why doesn't Google send a delegation to Riyadh or Tehran?
The stated purpose of the campaign is for Google employees to have the same respect outside of the office that they have in the office -- Google has an office in Singapore, but none in Saudi Arabia or Iran. And the statement about the focus was "countries like Singapore" not exclusively Singapore.
Leviticus 18:22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.
If we are going to enforce every prohibition in the book of Leviticus through civil law, things are going to get interesting.
On immigration, resident foreigners must have all the rights and privileges of native-born citizens. (Lv 19:33-34 "When a foreigner resides among you, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.")
On the labor-relations front, we need to outlaw monthly, biweekly, and other pay schedules -- employees must be paid daily, on the same day they work. (Lv 19:13 "[...]. Do not hold back the wages of a hired worker overnight.")
On the fashion front, we need to outlaw blended materials. (Lv 19:19 "[...]. Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.")
Also on the fashion front, we need the government to regulate hairstyles. (Lev 19:37 "Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.")
Even more on the style front, we need to outlaw tatooing. (Lev 19:38 "Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD.")
You can't just focus on the one prohibition in Leviticus 18:22 and ignore the rest (Lv 19:37 "Keep all my decrees and all my laws and follow them. I am the LORD.")
[Regardless of Personal Opinions...] Unilaterally deciding something like this on a federal/national level is wrong and illegal, just as was the income tax
What? "Wrong" is a matter of opinion, to be sure, but "illegal...just as was the income tax"? That's...amusing.
These issues aren't defined in the constitution as powers of the federal government
Taxation is defined as a federal government -- specifically, Congressional -- power in Art. I, Sec. 8 ("The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States"). There are limits in Art. I, Sec. 9 that require that direct taxes must be apportioned in accord with the census ("No capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken"), but an exception for income taxes was created by the 16th Amendment to the Constitution ("The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.")
You're completely missing the point. We should be talking about the quality of Google's tools here. If Microsoft's Word can help Google's CEO with grammar, then why the hell Google's tools cannot. It just means that Google (and cloud) is lacking behind and desktop apps still rule.
Actually, it doesn't mean that at all. The fact that some posts could be improved by Microsoft's tools doesn't mean those tools would be a net gain. In each new version of Word, I generally spend a little while trying out the grammar check function -- and it does occasionally catch grammatical errors. But, when used by someone who knows what they are doing, it more often misflags correct grammar, and it tends to be a net productivity drag, which is why after a short try-out period, it ends up getting turned off.
If something is important enough to have someone proofread, you should do that. If it isn't—and you have any grammar skills of your own to start with—you're probably wasting your time using an automated grammar checker.
What these comments are dancing around is that if Obama is reelected, businesses will continue to face the same disastrous approach to the economy we have now
You mean if Obama is elected the Republicans in Congress will continue their approach of scuttling any proposal that has a chance of helping the economy improve in the hopes that if they make the country collapse badly enough, it will rebound against the party of the incumbent in the next Presidential election?
Plausible, but more of a reason to vote against Republican candidates in the Congressional elections than for their candidate in the Presidential one.
In lots of wars -- almost all of them historically -- the people leading the war use some abstract idea like national pride or religion or whatever else as a propaganda tool to get other people to fight in the war for them.
But, ultimately, they are about who (both on the national level and the personal level) controls resources.
A really serious problem though with Iran is the same as North Korea, once Iran gets nukes, its people will never be free of its crazy tyranny, and I think that's a real motivation for the leadership.
If the Soviet Union's vast nuclear arsenal couldn't protect it from internal dissatisfaction, I doubt any nuclear arsenal Iran or North Korea will come up with will do much better. Nuclear weapons are about the least useful tools for domestic counterinsurgency imaginable.
That's exactly what he said, wars have been relegated to "peripheral states", not major states. Proxy wars between major states inside a third-party country is not the same thing as a direct war between the two major states.
Yeah.
For one thing, they are a lot worse for the civilian population of the third-party country.
But any effect nuclear weapons have of redirecting major power war to the territory of non-nuclear states isn't the same thing as preventing war. (And, its not an effect that's seen between nuclear powers that lack convenient third-party proxy battlegrounds, like India and Pakistan.)
Since proliferation means that the convenient third-party proxy battlegrounds dry up for those competing nuclear powers that currently have such available, it still increases, rather than constrains, the prospects for direct major-power war.
Would it have taken Nostradamus to figure out that the USSR would do the same thing to Japan that they did to Eastern Europe if given the chance?
Well, since the USSR didn't have much interest in waging war on Japan, and waited as long as permitted by their agreement with the other Allies to do so, it was a pretty good guess that they weren't going to do much there without the Western Allies twisting their arms.
I don't think you understand what "etc." means. The examples were just three of the best most recognizable of a very long list of post-1945 wars fueled by by the geopolitical rivalry of the nuclear powers and genocides and other atrocities carried out by regimes protected from outside intervention by one or more nuclear powers (including by one or more of the perpetrators being nuclear powers.)
Love it or hate it, MAD is the most successful peace program this world has ever known
Well, except for the fact that armed conflict hasn't been reduced in the age of MAD, and much of it has been driven directly by the geopolitical rivalry of the nuclear armed powers.
MAD has influenced the selection of the venues and targets of armed conflict among the existing options by changing the relative costs of engaging one target vs another, but it hasn't done anything to reduce armed conflict.
Because of nukes the cold war remained cold and never became hot.
The wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc., never happened in the world you live in?
China will at some point want to attack. If we have only 300 nukes, then in a first wave, they can take out more than 1/2.
If we have 300 nukes on the ground at the time a "first wave" is launched, its unlikely that even half will still be on the ground by the time it strikes.
Easy to block that.
No, its not.
OTOH, if we have 3K+, then China can not block all of them.
Its rather unlikely that there will ever be more than an extended period of time where China will have a defense system that gives it near-certain protection against 150 nukes of the type the US would have deployed at the time, but not against 3,000 of them.
Slashdot Mirror
There are two articles linked in TFS. I think you have misinterpreted GP as referring to the first linked article (the Nature: Climate Change research letter) when it was actually referring to the second linked article (the Register piece subtitled "IPCC has got it all wrong, say boffins".)
It should have been obvious that GP was referring to the Register piece for two main reasons:
1. It referred to "the article" conveniently ignoring recent anthropogenic warming, which the Nature: Climate Change research letter mentions, for context, in its second sentence, but the Register piece doesn't mention at all.
2. As you yourself mention, it interprets "the article" as presenting an argument against AGW, which the Register piece does, but the Nature: Climate Change research letter does not.
Did you? That reference -- which is provided to give context to the overall significance of measurements of orbital forcing (e.g., why is it that anyone should care about what this paper is about) -- is the only reference to AGW in the paper.
Its not at all about AGW one way or the other (except in that its about methodology in climate science which might eventually have some impact on studies that actually do directly relate to AGW.)
Its actually not a fine, its a settlement without admission of wrongdoing. An actual fine would require the FTC to prove that Google had done something for which it could be fined, which would have involved more public expense at greater risk. (If they had a really strong case, they would have held out for at least a settlement with an admission of wrongdoing, since when finalized such a settlement would have greater value in future proceedings.)
The only people who could "curbstomp" Prop 8 were the voters or the courts.
Google has directed resources at getting each of those decision makers to do so (and not just against Prop 8, but also the federal DOMA.)
So you are quibbling now that they shouldn't launch a global effort for equal rights now because during an election campaign where an equal rights issue was on the ballot in California, they didn't spend as much money as you would have preferred on that effort? How does that argument even begin to make sense?
I heard lots about it and I live in California. That you didn't may tell me more about you than it does about Google's opposition to Prop 8.
Historically, that's not really true. Marriage historically has been about property rights, first and foremost, which are clearly within what is understood in the modern world as being part of the function of civil government. Its usually had both what, from a modern perspective, are "civil" and "religious" trappings, because the whole idea of a crisp boundary between religious institutions and civil government is extraordinarily modern.
Its a grammar fail, but not -- as suggested upthread -- a comma splice. A comma splice is a run-on formed by connecting an independent clause to another independent clause with a bare comma, rather than either a semi-colon or a comma plus a conjunction.
E.g.:
instead of:
or:
If your grammar is bad enough that what it catches isn't mostly flat-out wrong, then its unlikely that it is going to consistently lead you to something that is both correct and has the intended semantics.
Not knowing common homonyms isn't usually a source of errors (of grammar, spelling, or usage), though not knowing common homophones can be a source of spelling errors that aren't caught by spelling checkers (or a cause of choosing the wrong correction for a spelling error that is caught by a spelling checker) -- and which look like usage errors. But these types of errors can be impossible for a grammar checker to catch, as well, since often a set of homophones are all the same part of speech, even though they have different semantics.
Google did oppose Prop 8 for most of the same reasons cited for the new campaign.
Google isn't promoting homosexuality, they are promoting equal rights for homosexuals. They aren't the same thing, any more than promoting equal rights for racial minorities is the same thing is promoting people deciding to be racial minorities.
You are, of course, free both to promote heterosexuality and to do what is actually parallel to what Google is doing, which would be promoting equal rights for heterosexuals.
Of course, the thing with equality is that promoting equal rights for group X is exactly the same thing as promoting equal rights from group defined as not-X.
Interestingly, most of the obvious issues with divorce have been rather thoroughly addressed in business law relating to the separation of partnerships, and the issues are pretty much exactly parallel. That's not to say that there aren't issues to be addressed, but its not like there isn't a pretty good roadmap already laid out for how to address most of them.
Why should someone who is advocating for the position "marriage between two people of the same gender should be legal" be compelled to first defend the position "marriage between more than two people should be illegal"?
Plus, it makes it much easier to maintain the legal code if you reuse the existing code for marriage rather than copy-and-paste it with a different name.
Plus, what's the purpose of a different name?
Marriage historically is primarily about the ownership and inheritance of property and custody of and responsibility for children. These are things which are clearly important concerns of civil law, and remain the primary focus of the civil institution of marriage. How people love is (in the grand sweep of history) only tangentially related to marriage.
Its actually not at all a separate matter, since the legal presumption of paternity that is associated with marriage is actually quite important in child support.
The stated purpose of the campaign is for Google employees to have the same respect outside of the office that they have in the office -- Google has an office in Singapore, but none in Saudi Arabia or Iran. And the statement about the focus was "countries like Singapore" not exclusively Singapore.
If we are going to enforce every prohibition in the book of Leviticus through civil law, things are going to get interesting.
On immigration, resident foreigners must have all the rights and privileges of native-born citizens. (Lv 19:33-34 "When a foreigner resides among you, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.")
On the labor-relations front, we need to outlaw monthly, biweekly, and other pay schedules -- employees must be paid daily, on the same day they work. (Lv 19:13 "[...]. Do not hold back the wages of a hired worker overnight.")
On the fashion front, we need to outlaw blended materials. (Lv 19:19 "[...]. Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.")
Also on the fashion front, we need the government to regulate hairstyles. (Lev 19:37 "Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.")
Even more on the style front, we need to outlaw tatooing. (Lev 19:38 "Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD.")
You can't just focus on the one prohibition in Leviticus 18:22 and ignore the rest (Lv 19:37 "Keep all my decrees and all my laws and follow them. I am the LORD.")
What? "Wrong" is a matter of opinion, to be sure, but "illegal...just as was the income tax"? That's...amusing.
Taxation is defined as a federal government -- specifically, Congressional -- power in Art. I, Sec. 8 ("The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States"). There are limits in Art. I, Sec. 9 that require that direct taxes must be apportioned in accord with the census ("No capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken"), but an exception for income taxes was created by the 16th Amendment to the Constitution ("The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.")
Actually, it doesn't mean that at all. The fact that some posts could be improved by Microsoft's tools doesn't mean those tools would be a net gain. In each new version of Word, I generally spend a little while trying out the grammar check function -- and it does occasionally catch grammatical errors. But, when used by someone who knows what they are doing, it more often misflags correct grammar, and it tends to be a net productivity drag, which is why after a short try-out period, it ends up getting turned off.
If something is important enough to have someone proofread, you should do that. If it isn't—and you have any grammar skills of your own to start with—you're probably wasting your time using an automated grammar checker.
You mean if Obama is elected the Republicans in Congress will continue their approach of scuttling any proposal that has a chance of helping the economy improve in the hopes that if they make the country collapse badly enough, it will rebound against the party of the incumbent in the next Presidential election?
Plausible, but more of a reason to vote against Republican candidates in the Congressional elections than for their candidate in the Presidential one.
In lots of wars -- almost all of them historically -- the people leading the war use some abstract idea like national pride or religion or whatever else as a propaganda tool to get other people to fight in the war for them.
But, ultimately, they are about who (both on the national level and the personal level) controls resources.
If the Soviet Union's vast nuclear arsenal couldn't protect it from internal dissatisfaction, I doubt any nuclear arsenal Iran or North Korea will come up with will do much better. Nuclear weapons are about the least useful tools for domestic counterinsurgency imaginable.
Yeah.
For one thing, they are a lot worse for the civilian population of the third-party country.
But any effect nuclear weapons have of redirecting major power war to the territory of non-nuclear states isn't the same thing as preventing war. (And, its not an effect that's seen between nuclear powers that lack convenient third-party proxy battlegrounds, like India and Pakistan.)
Since proliferation means that the convenient third-party proxy battlegrounds dry up for those competing nuclear powers that currently have such available, it still increases, rather than constrains, the prospects for direct major-power war.
Well, since the USSR didn't have much interest in waging war on Japan, and waited as long as permitted by their agreement with the other Allies to do so, it was a pretty good guess that they weren't going to do much there without the Western Allies twisting their arms.
I don't think you understand what "etc." means.
The examples were just three of the best most recognizable of a very long list of post-1945 wars fueled by by the geopolitical rivalry of the nuclear powers and genocides and other atrocities carried out by regimes protected from outside intervention by one or more nuclear powers (including by one or more of the perpetrators being nuclear powers.)
Well, except for the fact that armed conflict hasn't been reduced in the age of MAD, and much of it has been driven directly by the geopolitical rivalry of the nuclear armed powers.
MAD has influenced the selection of the venues and targets of armed conflict among the existing options by changing the relative costs of engaging one target vs another, but it hasn't done anything to reduce armed conflict.
The wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc., never happened in the world you live in?
If we have 300 nukes on the ground at the time a "first wave" is launched, its unlikely that even half will still be on the ground by the time it strikes.
No, its not.
Its rather unlikely that there will ever be more than an extended period of time where China will have a defense system that gives it near-certain protection against 150 nukes of the type the US would have deployed at the time, but not against 3,000 of them.